North Korea Says Trump’s Tweets Are a Declaration of War

As president, Donald Trump seems intent on testing the efficacy of the Madman Theory of foreign affairs, alternating wildly between making grandiose threats, refusing to reveal his plans (perhaps even to himself), and tweeting even the most nonsensical thoughts that cross his mind. “I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing,” Trump said in 2015, defending his lack of a strategy to defeat the Islamic State. “Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to tell at some point, but there is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory.” This deliberate ambiguity has caused problems for Trump allies, as well as his antagonists. “When he speaks, I have to figure out what he means, and what his next move will be,” one North Korean analyst toldThe New Yorker, lamenting the difficulty of his assignment. “He might be irrational—or too smart. We don’t know.”

A more disciplined mind might be able to pull off this trick. Trump, unfortunately, seems to have confused North Korea into believing that he may have already declared war. “The U.N. charter stipulates individual member states’ rights to self-defense,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Monday morning, addressing the president’s recent tweets in a statement near the United Nations. “Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down the United States’ strategic bombers even when they’re not yet inside the airspace border of our country.” In other words: Trump’s tweets about “Rocket Man,” as he’s taken to calling Kim Jong Un, may lead the U.S. into war with North Korea.

Ri ended his press conference with a warning. “The question of who won’t be around much longer will be answered then,” he said before walking away. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether starting a war via tweet is a violation of its terms of service.

Trump’s most recent skirmish with North Korea can be traced back to the U.N. General Assembly last week, when Trump delivered a maniacal soliloquy threatening to annihilate the Kim regime. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” he said. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” Over the weekend, before Ri’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. Air Force bombers and fighter jets flew along North Korea’s east coast in a show of force.

“This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana Whitetold Reuters. Ri spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, saying that targeting the U.S. mainland with rockets was inevitable. “‘President Evil’ is holding the seat of the U.S. president,” Ri said during his speech. Trump tweeted after Ri’s U.N. speech on Saturday night, in what would apparently be the final straw for North Korea. “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N.,” he wrote. “If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”

The State Department is downplaying North Korea’s comments. “The United States has not ‘declared war’ on North Korea. We continue to seek a peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” State Department spokesperson Katina Adams told CNN. “No nation has the right to fire on other nations’ aircraft or ships in international airspace or waters.”